Good morning, friends and fans!
Welcome to a “Peek Into My Week”! Here’s a look at some of my latest news: March 13, 2023! Here are some things that happened this past week.
News About Writing & Publishing: This Is The Current State Of Things
Let’s take a look at the current status quo on various ongoing issues affecting my writing or publishing:
- Writing: Last week, I completed my second academic paper for the year, “What is Satanism – Really? And What Isn’t? A Concise Definition Of Christianity-created Pseudo-satanism (CCPS)“! This paper draws heavily on several of the other papers I wrote in the same field of New Religious Movements, namely:
- Articles: Last week, I published the following articles: “Why Should LGBT+ People Read Books By Christina Engela?” and “What Happened To The South African Satanic Church? …And Other Unanswered Questions“. I wasn’t quite prepared for the amount of views this latter article received – 233 on the first day!
- What Readers Say: I’m not sure, I can’t please everybody – drop me a line and let me know how I’m doing? Meanwhile, here are some of the comments I received for my article on the SA Satanic Church :
Other Stuff:
Pardon My Little Obsession
Someone said this past week that my focus in writing academic papers on Satanism and the occult seems “obsessive”. After all, I’ve published 6 papers on the subject – 1 in 2013, 3 in 2021, and 2 this year already. All geared towards correcting misconceptions and misrepresentations of Satanism as a religion.
Would people react the same way if I’d written six papers on Christianity? Judaism? Islam? The Pastafarian Church? Dudism? My focus has been New Religious Movements after all – which is a neat academic way to say “cults”… without actually saying it. Yet Satanism and the occult as a topic seems to make some people nervous. Why is that? Could it be that the people who squirm at the mere mention of the words don’t know as much about it as they think they do? Or because what they’ve been told about it is all they know about it – and they’ve been hopelessly misinformed and on shaky ground?
But obsessive? Fair enough – but in my case the obsession isn’t so much in the context of Satanism and the occult alone, but in telling the truth, setting the record straight, righting wrongs and standing against injustice, misrepresentation and persecution.
If that isn’t popular, then the reasons why… are literally the reason why.
So until the point that Satanism and occult religions are not what Christians claim they are becomes general knowledge, and the prejudiced Christian viewpoint is no longer central to how society contemporary society views and portrays them, you’ll just have to pardon my… little obsession.
Quantity AND Quality
Next, the quantity and quality of my work appears to bother some people. For example, some seem to think 35 books is a lot to have written. Okay, it is a lot – especially to people who’ve only maybe written one, or maybe none. Of perhaps half as many.
35. It’s quite a number, right? Okay, now I’m getting a big head.
Where do I find the time, they ask, as if I somehow “cheated” or accusingly, as though my books are of inferior quality because they think I wrote them all in just two or three years. I didn’t – I started writing novels in 1992. That’s 31 years ago. That’s about 1.1 books a year.
I started self-publishing in 2006, and have bounced around a bit between publishers. They may have been published in rapid order, but that’s only because they were already complete. Most of them have also been through multiple editing processes through three different publishers over the years in addition to my own. The covers have been refined through years of constant gradual tweaking and adjustment to present the best possible end-product to you, the reader.
My books are my life’s work.
The best part is, I’m not done yet. There will be more. Best buckle up!
No power in the ‘verse will stop me!
Those Fundamentalists Again
According to fundamentalist Christians who attack any sex other than heterosexual sex for purposes of recreation only, “God hates the male seed going to waste”. According to the bible (Genesis 38:9), a man was put to death for pulling out as a method of contraception, because his sperm fell on the ground.
According to the WHO, the average sperm-count per ejaculation can be between 39–928 million sperm cells.
This means that out of all those 39–928 million sperm cells – in the case of sex for procreation, just one (maybe two in the case of twins, three for triplets etc.) gets to fertilize an egg cell – which means WHAT for the rest? All 927,999,999 of them?
Think about it. Take all the time you need.
ESKOM… ‘Nuff Said
I wish this were satire, but the genii at ESKOM seem convinced that motor vehicles also use mains electricity. As long as ESKOM is in the hands of such incredibly competent people, nothing is ever going to get better and SA will remain FUBAR.
A Bizarre Start To The Day
What a bizarre start to the day I had Saturday! I just got up to go to the loo and took my phone with me. All the weird, scary news out there, like the world’s gone totally insane.
The US is surreal. As always, just more than usual. Laws against drag, against transgender people transitioning, receiving medical care, using public toilets, even finding or keeping employment. Also, evil GOP henchman Mitch McConnell, who has led the attacks on LGBT people and people of color in Congress for three decades, is in hospital, possibly dying, and his victims are too cowed to wish him ill, too timid to criticize him on social media while he’s lying in hospital. And I thought the Brits were the ones too held back by propriety to call a spade a spade. Fuck that, let the Nazi stooge die. Let Karma eat him whole. He’s earned it.
Further afield, Russia is still invading Ukraine, China is still trying to get the third world into more debt so it can take possession of its assets, and also trying to take over Taiwan without the world intervening. Threats apparently work wonders.
Speaking of the Brits, some were commenting on a piece about the Vatican returning from their archives three items stolen from the Acropolis, bizarrely, to say that this was “woke crap” and former colonies shouldn’t be given reparations by Britain for harm done either, rather, colonies should pay them for infrastructure developed and then left behind etc. All that fellow still needed to do was wave the Union Jack and give a little Nazi salute at the end. I ask, should South Africa perhaps pay Britain board and lodging for the women and children they forced into Boer War concentration camps? Contribute to a Lord Kitchener Memorial Fund perhaps? Asking for a friend.
At home in South Africa, we still don’t have reliable water supplies – or flooding, depending on where you live. On top of that, the entire country is crippled by rolling blackouts which we call “load-shedding”, with no end in sight to our suffering. The government’s solution to the whole problem has been to appoint a new “electricity minister”, whom they assume will somehow succeed where a string of government appointed CEOs of the state-owned electricity supplier ESKOM, have failed miserably. Perhaps it might be a good idea to change the people at the top of the pyramid for a change – the people meant to stop corruption, rather than the people whose role it is to just go with the flow of corruption? Just my take on the whole bizarre mess.
Following an underwhelming lack of international criticism of Uganda for again passing their famed “Kill the Gays Bill” last week, albeit in slightly toned-down form, neighbor Kenya is now gearing up to follow Uganda and the USA’s example in setting up genocidal laws themselves, and politicians are now bragging that LGBT refugees in their country will have to leave or get ready to be hunted. Like this is the announcement for a rugby match.
While I was there on the loo, I watched a video of an EV on fire in the US. Scary shit, right? It occurs to me that they marketed EV’s a bit too quickly – a little too desperately – for the battery tech to be safe and viable. Yes, the cars work, but let’s put it mildly – if even an electric bicycle can become a literal incendiary BOMB that can burn down a three story shop building just from catching fire outside, what sort of harm can a full-size EV sedan do? To a nearby home? Apartment block? Shopping mall? Imagine a seven car pile-up on a freeway like we see every other day – but with EVs? Now that would be a video worth watching, right? Those things burn for DAYS and nothing can put them out it seems, and the fire just spreads and spreads like a volcanic inferno. And now they’re developing aircraft using the same battery tech as well? Ha ha. I’d suggest waiting on the EV a while longer, until some better sort of battery comes along – one that doesn’t burn down the world we’re trying so desperately to save.
Scientists must have the most bizarre experience of all of us at the moment. In the midst of all this madness and utter chaos, they keep coming up with amazing new discoveries like workable warp theory, fission and room-temperature superconductors – yesterday they announced genetics breakthroughs that will allow male same-sex couples to have children containing both their genetic material. …And all this while having to deal with audiences containing morons who still insist the Earth is flat and birds are advanced government robots, and issue death threats.
And in the middle of all this insanity and gleeful evil – pointless celebrity trash news and adverts for air fryers.
At least I have a new kitten. Did I tell you that? Oh yes, wait, here’s two new photos:
That’s all for this week!
As always, I’ll keep you posted about any further developments. And remember:
In spite of some of my books having been on Amazon since 2005, not one of them has yet reached 10 reviews on any platform, let alone 50! I would really appreciate your help on this! Come on, leave a review – it’s free!
I wish you all a pleasant week until next time!
Thanks a lot for all your friendship and support, I hope you know it is all deeply appreciated. Keep reading!
Cheers!
All material copyright © Christina Engela, 2023.